02 March 19
FOCUS: Frank Rich | Are Foreign Countries Benefiting From Jared Kushner's Security Clearance?
Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Frank Rich, New York Magazine
EXCERPT:
Within a day of Representative Mark Meadows sidetracking the end of the Cohen hearing to argue that he was not a racist, at least three videos have surfaced of him pushing birtherism on the campaign trail, promising to send President Obama “back home, to Kenya or wherever it is.” Will there be a political price for those comments now?
There will be no political price for Meadows among his voters any more than for any other racists harbored by the Republican Party, whose voters are almost entirely loyal to a president who did far more to promote birtherism than a Meadows or Steve King could ever do. Let’s never forget the fact that the GOP has tolerated and exploited racism since its 1964 presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, voted against the Civil Rights Act. In recent years, especially in the aftermath of America electing its first black president, the party has been pursuing wholesale minority-voter suppression efforts, including phony campaigns against nonexistent election fraud. (The only proven case of major fraud, we now know, was undertaken on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate, Mark Harris, in Meadows’s own state of North Carolina.)
This toxicity poisoned the GOP well before Trump became a Republican, and unless and until the party starts exorcising it instead of denying it, it will remain in place after he’s gone.
Rich writes: "Surely you are not suggesting that Jared resign before he unveils his Middle East peace plan! In any case, there may be no way to force any of these grifters out of the White House short of handcuffs."
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